VI. THE FOURTH-TYPE ADDITION 



\\^hen the Late Bonitians scrapped their grandiose plan for an east- 

 ward extension of their village they immediately began a substitute. 

 They built an addition that commenced outside Room 297, on the 

 north, and extended around to Room 176 at the southeast corner. 

 That the results should balance earlier additions on the west side of 

 the pueblo may be only fortuitous, but together the two created the 

 unique and harmonious groundplan that is peculiar to Pueblo Bonito 

 (fig- 2). 



No time was lost between abandonment of one project and 

 initiation of the next. No blown sand had collected upon the aban- 

 doned foundations before the new exterior wall was started. This 

 new wall had its own independent foundation, built in the same 

 manner as those of the discarded series and of the same materials. 

 Furthermore, the new foundation approximates in height those it 

 replaced, tops off at the same level with them, and, wherever they 

 come in contact, abuts the older units. 



It was outside Room 184, while clearing away a 2-story-high 

 accumulation of fallen stonework and blown sand, that we unex- 

 pectedly came upon these older, abandoned foundations (pi. 41, 

 upper). Some of those older units, loosely built of mud and friable 

 sandstone, extended under the outer wall of 184 and were abutted 

 by its 22-inch-high foundation. Two feet lower, or about 4 feet from 

 the surface, we discovered the pavement-smooth silt deposit that led 

 to and under the Braced-up Cliff terrace (herein, p. 143 ; Judd, 1959&, 

 p. 503). Thus an average 2 feet of blown sand containing a scatter- 

 ing of clay pellets and occasional potsherds had collected upon that 

 buried silt stratum before Late Bonitian architects initiated their 

 substitute for the east-side addition they had so recently abandoned. 



A hundred feet to the west, outside Room 189, the buried silt lay at 

 comparable depth but here constructional waste, blown sand, and 

 fallen masonry above the outlying foundations was 2 to 2^ feet 

 deeper (pi. 44, left). Hence the higher surface elevation shown on 

 our cross-section C-C (fig. 15) as compared with that outside Room 

 184. Overlying all were fragments of the cliff- fall Jackson (1878, 

 p. 442) had noted in 1877 and Mindeleff had photographed 10 years 

 later. 



The foundation prepared for this substitute addition had its 



154 



